themeaningoflifeisnot: Sure, Brinker's misuse of funds is wrong. And she should pay the price. But isn't this a rather disturbingly frequent problem with many major charities? If it's generally not right to let an individual's financial malfeasance taint the whole charitable organization, why is it ok to write off Komen's charitable mission as a failure just because of Brinker's misdeeds?

Brinker IS Komen. CEO = public face. Your CEO is a degenerate, so is your organization.

You know, accountability? Something we have seemingly lost.

What an abortion of a charity.

sweetmelissa31: [www.thedailybeast.com image 503x335]

Is this an actual picture of her, or is it an evil alien queen from a low budget sci-fi movie?

Must be reality; a movie would have three heads in the lower right corner.

More like Susan B. CONMAN!! Amirite or what subby!

Susan G. Komen never existed. She was made up to give a name to this corporation.

CptnSpldng: sweetmelissa31: [www.thedailybeast.com image 503x335]

Is this an actual picture of her, or is it an evil alien queen from a low budget sci-fi movie?

Must be reality; a movie would have three heads in the lower right corner.

Beat me to it.

\rabid MiSTie

I've personally raised over $2000 for her. I feel so good about that now.

Charities mostly exist to give people jobs and for certain people to launder money. Might as well just give your money directly to the homeless but I understand that isn't a tax write-off.

Separated at birth?

You know the drill. There actually is an "invoice.com" I'm sure we all were doing work back then so vaguely related to cancer that it's billing season for the Dallas Junior League's favorite.

At the same time, they describe her as an imposing figure who flies first class, prefers five-star hotels.....

So what?

This organization sounds more and more crooked every day.

Its basically a jobs project for the hardcore right wing.

Kyro: FlashHarry: the more you dig into this "charity," the more it stinks. their planned parenthood flap will reverberate for a long time. it might even prove fatal.

Seriously. Lesson learned: don't screw with Planned Parenthood.

I don't think that's really the lesson. The lesson is that an apolitical charity is the best charity. And if your charity is based primarily on a specific group (women, in this instance), let's not make a political move that alienates 1/2 of your primary base.

Just stick a fork in this charity and just give your money to other more worthy causes like St. Jude or donate to directly to places that will do breast cancer screenings like Planned Parenthood. Why have a middleman at all?

It will be a cold day in hell before I ever give a penny to a large charity. I am quite generous to the people I personally know who are in need.

Real charity begins at home. Organized charities are little more than money makers for the administration with little good for the cause.

Marcus Aurelius: All the other charity CEOs get $400k a year, so clearly she needs $500k a year to remain respectable.

Then they'll want yearly bonuses because they help the bottom line by being half million dollar CEO's.

Somehow.

themeaningoflifeisnot: Sure, Brinker's misuse of funds is wrong. And she should pay the price. But isn't this a rather disturbingly frequent problem with many major charities? If it's generally not right to let an individual's financial malfeasance taint the whole charitable organization, why is it ok to write off Komen's charitable mission as a failure just because of Brinker's misdeeds?

This seems to be a common theme with a lot of charities that reach a certain size/level of popularity or national awareness. I kind of wonder if it's just not a Catch-22 of doing charitable work; charities tend to rely on the charitable nature of people to get things done that need doing, either for free or at a pittance salary, but eventually the work becomes to great and you have to start paying people real, competitive salaries to get them to stay. Suddenly you're bidding against other Fortune 500 companies for the employment of people who, at least you think/believe, are necessary to keep growing the charity.

I realize this isn't the case with Brinker in particular, but still, I do think that this is perhaps a problem that slowly creeps into charities.

ImRonBurgundy: Susan G. Komen never existed. She was made up to give a name to this corporation.

Susan Goodman Komen was a real woman. She died in 1980, after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 37 years old.

She was also Nancy Goodman Brinker's older sister.

Thank you, Nancy, for turning your sister's suffering into personal profit and ruining her name in the process. Coont.

RexTalionis: I've looked at their (national organization, which Brinker has direct control over) 990 tax forms. They spend (significantly) more money on executive compensation, salaries, IT budget, office expenses, travel, convention attendance and events than they do on charitable grants.

All of that you just posted? Bullshiat doublespeak. They rate quite high on Charity Navigator and they handed out 82% of their donations in 2011 to outside groups. They hand out more research money in the US than anyone except the National Cancer Institute.

For 2011:

The organization's 2011 financial statement reports that 43 percent of donations were spent on education, 18 percent on fund-raising and administration, 15 percent on research awards and grants, 12 percent on screening and 5 percent on treatment. (Various other items accounted for the rest.) (new window)

How about you do this? Join Charity Navigator and you can actually read the breakdown of their expenses, per year, back to 2003. That way you don't have to lie to people who don't know any better.

i think bilked would have been a better term

bongmiester: Brinker, 65, earns more than $400,000 a year at Komen, a level of compensation that is in line with the pay for top officials at other major charities

that doesn't make it right

Yeah, that seems way too high for the head of a charity. That's high enough that the charity itself could use the money. Don't get me wrong, if running the charity is her full time job, then she needs to make a living wage, but that's ridiculous.

The $133K charged to the charity while she worked for the State Department - that's meh - she was still doing work for the charity, so she still had expenses, big deal. That's just liberal derp (OMG, she was working for BUSH!!!! and still charging expenses to the charity!!!!)

"Komen for the cure of being poor"

sweetmelissa31: Is this an actual picture of her, or is it an evil alien queen from a low budget sci-fi movie?

meh, no rack

The only difference between a for-profit corporation and a not-for-profit corporation is that in the case of the latter there are no shareholders keeping an eye on management.

bongmiester: Brinker, 65, earns more than $400,000 a year at Komen, a level of compensation that is in line with the pay for top officials at other major charities

that doesn't make it right

I'm having an "Internet" moment right now. How is it that this simple bit of wisdom is bereft of the leaders of the world's charities, but they would have to read a comment by bongmiester at Fark.com to get it.